|
| Chapbooks produced for love of books By Stacy Trevenon [ stacy@hmbreview.com ] Published/Last Modified on Wednesday, April 8, 2009 9:14 AM PDT Caroline Goodwin harbors no illusions about the economics of being a creative writer. “If you’re a poet, it’s like saying you’re a folksinger,” said Goodwin, her eyes twinkling. “It’s valid, but it doesn’t bring home the bacon.” But if you’re creative, adaptable and devoted to the concept of books and language as a kind of art form, it can bring home more than cash, as it has for Goodwin on her involved literary journey. Goodwin, a Montara resident, has published two poetry chapbooks through MaCaHu, a small publishing endeavor she started last year with friends Hugh and Mary Behm-Steinberg of Berkeley. The small press has also published a third chapbook and will come out with a fourth, also by Goodwin, this summer. Poetry is only one facet of Goodwin’s literary repertoire. For seven years she has taught a variety of classes through Stanford University Continuing Studies, and teaches in both the graduate and undergraduate writing programs at the California College of the Arts. But writing poetry and putting it into chapbooks, which she binds by sewing by hand, is a labor of love for her. 0“I’m doing it because I value the book as a physical piece of art,” she said. “Chapbook” is a generic term that generally refers to a pocket-sized booklet. A popular form of publishing in the 16th to later 19th centuries, a chapbook can refer to anything that once formed part of the stock of a chapman, or a type of peddler. The word, Goodwin said, probably derives from Anglo-Saxon words for barter or sell. Such a booklet, Goodwin said, “should read like a long poem.” The reader, she added, “should come away with an emotional experience.” Goodwin’s first chapbook, “Kodiak Herbal,” published in February 2008, takes its name from Goodwin’s love of plant names, the folkloric tradition and the language in field guides. The Behm-Steinbergs did the colorful cover design, which incorporated berries and leaves, and it is filled with Goodwin’s graceful yet strongly visual poetry and references to herbal lore. It is very introspective poetry, she said, noting that some of it was written about her daughter, who died at age 1 after an illness. The second book, “Gora Verstovia,” is named for Gora Verstovia mountain in Alaska, the state where Goodwin grew up. Its viewpoint is more out of the self, Goodwin said: it is more gritty, and touches on people she knew in Alaska such as some of her fellow workers in a fish packing plant. “I’m looking out away from myself,” she said. Both chapbooks are sewed at the spine, a process Goodwin describes as “soothing,” noting studies that have indicated that making crafts has had a calming effect on patients who have been traumatized. Goodwin started writing poetry in 1988, in her mid-20s, after growing up in Anchorage. She snagged a Wallace Stegner fellowship in poetry through Stanford University, and came to California in 1999 to do that. Her educational journey has been varied. She earned an undergraduate degree in biology, added an master’s in creative writing with an emphasis on poetry from the University of British Columbia. She taught writing at Stanford (children’s literature,) the University of California, Berkeley, extension and California College of the Arts. She founded the publishing venture with the Behm-Steinbergs to provide another avenue for publishing work such as chapbooks. “It’s the three of us having fun,” she said. She calls the Coastside a good place for a literary-minded person to live, with its several poetry open mikes and people who “really talk to one another.” Her chapbooks are available (at $7-$12) at Ink Spell Books in downtown Half Moon Bay and at www.carolinegoodwin.com, a Web site she said will be up by April 10. |